


The Peace Project

by agent_wheeler



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Rating is for swearing, The Avengers (2012) Compliant, The Avengers (2012) Spoilers, basically just 2000 words of back-end SHIELD Admin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28410159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_wheeler/pseuds/agent_wheeler
Summary: From the outside, SHIELD’s Strasbourg Office looked remarkably nondescript. On a road full of diplomatic and legal offices variously associated with the European Union, there was nothing that would make a passer-by suspect the mid-terrace office space was anything out of the ordinary.Basically just 2000 words about the admin from the mission in Stuttgart from The Avengers (2012), because that's how my brain works.
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

_Helicarrier Alfa to Control-Strasbourg Office?  
I repeat: Helicarrier Alfa to Control-Strasbourg Office?_

The crackling of the control panel in the centre of the conference room drew everyone’s attention away from the morning briefing. Agent Long moved from his position at the podium to click the receiver to speakerphone.

“Go for Strasbourg Control.”  
_Who’s speaking? Is this line secure?_  
“This is Agent Long, Officer Commanding Strasbourg Office. You’re currently being broadcast to the other heads of department, but no-one below a Level 5. Who’s this?”  
_This is Agent Coulson. Look, I’m faxing you through an information packet, but you’ll need to get a recon team ready to deploy in the next hour. You copy?_  
“Roger that, sir. Anything else we should know?”  
_It’s all in the packet. We’ll make contact again when we’re nearer. Out._

One of the admin staff knocked on the door to the conference room. “Agent Long, sir? We’ve just had a packet through from Director Fury for you,” he said, holding out a sizeable manilla file with the SHIELD eagle stamped across the front. Long took the file and dismissed the clerk with a nod of his head. “Meeting adjourned. I’ll be in touch,” Long said, gesturing to the file.


	2. Chapter 2

From the outside, SHIELD’s Strasbourg Office looked remarkably nondescript. On a road full of diplomatic and legal offices variously associated with the European Union, there was nothing that would make a passer-by suspect the mid-terrace office space was anything out of the ordinary. 

Even on the inside, you’d be hard-pressed to know that the staff of the building weren’t, as their door passes said, working for the NGO _The Peace Project_ , and were instead in the employ of the security community. You’d need to get close enough to read one of the computer screens to discover the truth, and you’d almost certainly be dead before that happened.

After the excitement of the interrupted briefing, Effie Walker’s morning had calmed down so much she might even have called it boring. It wasn’t until she’d gotten up from her desk on the third floor to go and get a cup of tea from the break room that she even paid a second thought to Agent Coulson’s ominous message. Thermos in hand, she was walking down the corridor on the first floor that contained the Office’s sole non-leaking kettle when Long stuck his head out of his own office and called her over. 

“Agent Walker, a quick word?”  
“Sir?” She replied, turning to face him and walking towards his open door. She stepped inside and he gestured for her to take a seat opposite from where he’d resumed his usual position behind his complex set-up of monitors.   
“We’ve had a job come up in south Germany. They would have called it in to the Berlin Office, but we’re nearer and it’s time-sensitive. Also the guys in the Berlin Office are strange and I think Coulson prefers working with us.”  
Effie gave a small smile. She’d spent a few months in the Berlin Office at the end of the previous year, and she wasn’t in a hurry to return. Nothing against the city, she’d just worked with more interesting piles of dog shite than some of the agents she’d been alongside. “You want me to get someone on my team ready to go?”   
“Ideally, I was hoping you’d go. If it’s top team, you’re the terp with the highest security clearance, so it’d be saving us a headache’s-worth of paperwork.”  
“Who else is going?”   
“A fire-team from Ops, Duncan on logistics, and you, if you’re game. You’d open the mission package on route, but we could do with someone with your training on the team. You in?”  
“You’re shitting me, right sir? Of course I’m game!” Walker replied, excited, brain already going through the things she’d need to throw in a bag. “I’d be ready to deploy in an hour.”  
“You’ve got 45 minutes. Get to it.”

Once they were over the German border, Maxwell, the SO of the Ops team, passed round a black briefcase. From it, each member of the group pulled out a smaller file, sealed, with “Top Secret” stamped in red on the front. Tearing it open, Effie started to read it over. It was certainly the strangest brief she’d ever read. It seemed that Coulson’s team (or, at least, a team Coulson was on, but he was the only named agent on the document) had been conducting experiments with something ominously referred to as ‘The Cube’, but it had been stolen, and now the team were tracking down where it had got to. They’d picked up a positive ID of the ringleader of the heist in Stuttgart, and now SHIELD needed people on the ground to figure out what the hell this psychopath wanted in south Germany. Also in the packet was a document of potential targets in Stuttgart - a couple of scientific research labs, two government offices and a university building. The document was full of mission verbs like ‘observe’ and ‘uncover’, so Effie assumed that there was another team on hand to go in guns-blazing once they’d found the guy; it seemed as though the Strasbourg team were only there for recon.   
A lot of agents might have been disappointed with a briefing like that, but Effie didn’t mind too much. It’d been a while since she’d last fired a weapon off of the training range, and she knew that her skills were better used when there weren’t bullets flying. After all, bullets tended to make people shy away from conversation. 

After giving them all five minutes to read their packets, Maxwell called everyone in to discuss the plan. “They’ve scrambled a jet from the mid-Atlantic, but we’ll still be on the ground a few hours before them. My boys will split up to cover the areas with the different venues. Duncan and Walker, you good to get yourself set up on comms and work from there?” Effie nodded. Agent Duncan, who was, at this point, driving the van, did not. Maxwell continued, “we won’t have long to get set up, but mostly we’re just trying to narrow down the number of target sites so when the big guns from HQ arrive they’re not all split up. We can only assume the target is here looking for something to complete the weapon, so if I hear anything else from the labs stateside, I’ll pass that message on. For now, let’s make sure we’re all kitted up, and then we’ll get to work as soon as we arrive.”

Once the bus was parked, the Ops unit immediately disembarked and moved out, giving Effie space to begin setting up the radio equipment. Although she was a linguist by trade, the training at SHIELD Academy had also included six months of signals training, setting up and using the highly technical radio kit. Duncan was busy setting up the van’s remote networking, and as soon as it was plugged in the laptop pinged a message through from the Helicarrier Coulson’s call had come off of. Neither Effie nor Duncan quite grasped the details of it, but the transmission concluded that they’d identified exactly what the target, who they’d since learnt had been assigned the name 'Loki', was after. It was an odd codename, Effie thought, but it didn’t matter. One of the computer nerds in the DC Office had picked up some unusual computer traffic around the research of a particular lab at the southern edge of the city. It only had four researchers attached to each, and the Communications team had managed to track down the evening plans of each of them. It seemed they were quite famous, but the names didn’t mean anything to Effie. But at least now they knew who they were looking for. 

Having radioed the information over to Maxwell, it was agreed that the Ops boys were best used for the tailing jobs that weren’t going to require them to speak to anyone. They were all excellent at their specific trade, but smooth-talking couldn’t be described as their strong suit. The only one of the taskings that required some degree of delicacy was trailing the lead researcher at the lab, who they’d discovered was due to be attending the opening of an art collection at the city hall, so it was decided that Effie would take that one. 

Once she’d got in to the building, it was just a matter of making pretentious small talk about art until the suspect turned up. She’d much rather have been talking about modernism in her first or second languages, but didn’t mind working in her fourth too much. Her German frequently got good exercise on this current posting, and it was all good practice. She’d managed to find herself a rather striking red painting of _something-or-other_ to loiter by that gave her a decent view of the main doorway into building. There were only a couple of entrances to the building, she’d discovered on the plans they’d had faxed through from the Stuttgart city council, who’d been only too keen to help. 

It needn’t have mattered though. She clocked the suspect as soon as he walked through the door. It seemed he really wasn’t making much of an effort to keep himself hidden. His clothing was innocuous enough, especially in this crowd of artsy rich wanker types, but his cane was literally glowing. Like actually. Glowing blue. Immediately, Effie was on comms to report the citing.   
“Walker, I’m going to link you through to the strike team in the jet. Copy?” Maxwell asked.  
“Copy that, boss. Out.”   
There was a hissing noise of the frequency of her receiver changing, and then Effie’s line went quiet again.   
“Radio check?” She said, quietly enough, not sure if the line had gone silent for the op yet.  
“This is zero, identify yourself,” a sharp voice replied.   
“Agent Francesca Walker, Language Team Lead, Strasbourg Office.”  
“Hearing you loud and clear Agent Walker. Can you confirm that you’ve spotted the target?”   
“Affirmative. Target is wearing black evening dress and carrying a blue walking cane at City Hall, but appears to be alone. I can’t be sure what he’s plotting, but the Doctor is here to. Will keep an eye, but have orders not to engage. Copy?”   
“Copy. Do not engage. Target is to be taken in for questioning by our team. Any updates on order of proceedings for the event?”  
“Doctor is due to speak at 2200 hours, but nothing scheduled before that, just a string quartet playing its repertoire of four songs on loop, so the sooner this thing kicks off the better.”  
“Roger that. Keep me posted. Out.”

The scientist had only been speaking for about a minute when the shit started flying. Effie had seen Loki separate himself from the crowd on the upper balcony and begin walking down the main staircase, and immediately called it in to zero. Even after the target had knocked the scientist’s assistant out cold, she received another crackling order not to engage. Everyone was being shepherded out of the venue, but she stuck to the edges of the building and hid herself in the shadows - a move that proved useful when the jet she’d been on comms to had arrived. That hadn’t been that much of a shock in and of itself; what’d been more of a shock was when that jet was preceded by the literal Captain America, and followed by literal Iron Man. Once they’d started fighting with the target, there’d been fuck all Effie to usefully add to the situation, aside from explaining to a local police officer why it was a bad idea for him for his men to also get involved.

Once the target had surrendered, Loki was escorted into the jet by the two _literal superheroes_ , and Effie had to pinch herself to remind herself that yes, this was really happening. Of course, she’d known that the two of them both _existed_. With all the hubbub there’d been when Captain America was found two years prior, it was pretty hard not to know who he was. That didn’t mean there weren’t days when Effie forgot she worked for a spy agency, rather than just in an office for a faceless corporation. 

By the time she was done running point on liaising clean-up between Maxwell and the German authorities, the jet was long gone. When the team had arrived back in Strasbourg in the small hours of the following morning, Effie was hard pressed to remember that the evening had happened at all.


End file.
